August Moscow Update

Take the fact that I haven't written on this in a while as a good sign...I have been BUSY!!! Yeah!!! Since London we have been getting settled in our apartment, which is still empty. We have been shopping for all our "plug in" items and been to IKEA too many times to count. Burke has gotten the easy end of this moving deal. I moved us into our apartment one day while he was at work (with some help of one of the drivers, poor guy got more than he bargained for that day), and I refuse to go to IKEA on the weekends because it is so busy. Therefore, again, the poor driver that gets stuck with me to IKEA gets to help me carry everything up a flight of stairs into the elevator. Then once I get the boxes into the apartment, I am usually too excited to get it all cleaned up and clutter free (it is amazing how messy an empty apartment can get) that I start putting the furniture together, and Merrick "helps" me...which is so much more of a burden than anything. Luckily I have not lost any pieces or parts to furniture yet!

Aside from putting together IKEA furniture (I have vowed to never go back to IKEA again once we leave Russia someday) I have been searching for a nanny, who started yesterday. Her name is Asya, and she is from Armenia. She is married to a Russian man who is retired from the military and she has two children in their 30s. She is very very nice, and I think we will be happy with her. She is a former Kindergarten teacher. She taught at some space institute some years ago, and taught cosmonauts children. Pretty neat. Since then she has been a nanny. It is amazing, but Merrick speaks Russian with her and English with me already. He has picked up so many words since having a Russian nanny (we had temporary part time help prior to her). He says most names of animals in Russian, numbers, and hello, good bye, foods, etc. Then when talking to me, he switched to English. It is great!

I have also joined two womens groups. The International Womens Club and the American Womens Org. I am now the proud communications chairperson of the American Womens Organization! I have met some great people already through it and some are already leaving the country. It will be a change meeting people here that you know will already be leaving in a couple years. Most people come here on a set time period. They know they will be leaving in exactly 23 months...not us.

We had friends visit us last weekend, and we finally had a weekend out on the town. Tiffany and Zach (from Dallas) flew in last Thursday and left on Sunday. We had a great time! We had some great meals, went to the banya, aka Russian Bath House and rented a private room (http://www.sanduny.ru/en/index.php), went out to a disco, went on a tour of the Kremlin, saw Red Square at night...something everyone that visits us needs to do, and went out to a craft market. Pictures to be posted soon...

Now we are looking forward to our next visitor...my mom, who is bringing Taylor to us!!! We have not seen Taylor since June 7th, and I am so excited for them to come! I am sure Taylor will be somewhat in awe of what else there is in this world. She starts school already on August 19th, is signed up for soccer on the weekends, and I have already met other kids her age for her to play with out of school, so she will be set! It will be just like America, right? :)

My favorite part of all this so far, aside from meeting all sorts of interesting and very nice people (people have to be interesting and nice, I have decided, in order to move here) is my new role as a vacation planner. We are going to Munich and Salzberg in October (with the help of our old neighbor from Frisco who is from Germany...let me know if you need a European vacation planner, I will give you her website), Vancouver over New Years for skiing at Whistler, somewhere warm in February (maybe the Maldeves if Burke can take time off work), back to the states in April, to Ireland possibly in May, and back to the states in June. It is going to be a busy year of traveling and I cant wait!! We will be back in Texas for Christmas on December 17th in case anyone wants to put that on their calendars. I will be at Target all DAY on the 18th (and Chick-Fil-A, and La Hacenda Ranch for some good Tex Mex, and Gap, Nordstrom, Neiman's, Barnes and Noble, Half Price Books, a movie theater, etc, etc.)

Hope everyone is doing well!!! I will add some more pics soon!